Five addictions & blog award

I have been tagged by GretchenMist to share 5 of my addictions.
Hmm, I never thought about being addicted really...
Being addicted for me means getting all nervous and anxious about not having something.
So I think I'm addicted to these:

My laptop - everyday addiction

Salty crisps - addiction
Want to eat them everyday, but I don't! Clay - everyday addiction
Luckily I don't have to dig it out of the river!

Mail - everyday addiction
I love snail mail so getting a postcard or a letter can just really make my day! :)

And I was lucky today...
I received this beautiful vintage postcard from Vadjutka
Thank you Judit, you made me smile!!! :)

Babuschka's - everyday addiction

It wasn't like that before but now, they seem to rule my life! :)

Now I am supposed to tag 5 other people to share their addictions.
But I won't do that! If you read this and want to share, please do so.
Leave a comment in this post that you did and I'll come and check out your addictions 'cause I'm curious that way! :)

Yippeee, I got this award from 21! Thank you so much! :)
I love so many blogs that I find it hard to tag a few in particular. Sometimes I wish I had more time to read all the blogs I love more often...
So, if I don't visit regularly, it doesn't mean I don't love your blog, it's just I haven't found the place where they sell time yet! ;)

And today's work in progress... sanding - SOOOOO boring!

How to make a stamp?

For my packaging, I needed a Babuschka stamp so I decided to make one myself.
I'm not really an expert on lino cutting and stamp making but since I needed it fast, I gave it a try. This is what you need:
a lino cutting set, a pencil, a drawing, a sharpie marker, ink and a gum.
Trace the drawing with a pencil.
Turn around the drawing and rub the drwing onto the gum.
This is how it looks after rubbing it.
Trace the outline with a sharpie marker.
Cut away all the gum besides the black outlines.
This is how it looks when the outside is done.
This is how it looks when the inside is done.
Put some ink on the stamp.
Press the stamp onto the paper.
Now you can clearly see that the stamp needs to be cut some more. All the black marks can be cut away.
You can use either the lino cutters for this or a little scalpel knife.
Repeat the process of stamping again to see if it looks better after cutting away some more gum.
After the second time, I cut away a bit more... and now I'm satisfied.Stamp a design on a piece of wood and cut it out with a saw. Glue the stamp onto the wood.
Now I can use it for my packaging. I went out to buy packaging material yesterday.
I'm nearly all set for my mini feelings to fly out into the world...

After...

Had to wait really long to open the kiln. A ceramist has to be really patient, and normally I am but this time it was really really hard.
A few accidents that happened before firing didn't come out right. The feeling invincable lost part of his tail before it went in the kiln and I fixed it but it didn't stay.
I fired the feelings quite high for durability and didn't realise the blue engobe could not stand that high temperature so I'll be re-making those two feelings for sure.
Just very, very relieved there was no explosions or damage to any of them.
I'm a happy girl now... :)

Thanks...

I hug your comments
you all make
this blog

Before...

Created with fd's Flickr Toys. I think this looks good, now I hope that it looks OK too when I open it tommorrow. :)

First time firing the kiln

After I started the kiln on friday evening at 6pm, it cooled down till 120°C on saturday evening at 23pm. I was too tired to wait for it to cool down completely to load it again so today will be the big day but the results will be revealed tommorrow or the day after.
I have all my feelings ready to be fired. With only transporting them from upstairs to downstairs, some of them got damaged a tiny little bit. Jip, they are superfragile when dry and not fired.So I give them a little cure with clay slib & vinegar and for a few I'll just use some glaze as glue. I just have to be really careful when I adjust it as I don't want any signs of glaze on my little feelings. Here you see the most fragile feelings...

The secret Easter Bunny loves candy...

This is the fourth part of the series of questions I asked the European Streetteam Participants on the Secret Easter Bunny swap.
The question this time was: what is your most favorite candy?
All of the participants are woman and I think that we can easily say that woman and chocolate are inseperable. No less then 27 participants claimed chocolate to be their absolute favorite.
It doesn't really matter in what form it comes but these are the ones mentioned and prefered most: mik chocolate, pure chocolate, M&M's, chocolate mousse,... Well, and there were two participants who also belong to the first group but were kind of specific on what kind of chocolate candy they like best. Since we all know who we are talking about here, I'm just going to spill their names: Kreativlink and Swiedebie are true Snicker addicts!
Four people love licorice, being it sweet or salty...
Three people claimed to be not a candy person. Do they exist? :)
Some more favorite candies:

• Anything strawberry
• Marshmellows
• Bassetts winegums
• Milk candies
• Chewing gum

I had to look up two of them since I didn't know what they are:

Rum baba

A rum baba or baba au rhum is a small yeast cake saturated in liquor, usually rum, and sometimes filled with whipped cream or pastry cream.

Halva
Most types of halva are relatively dense confections that are sweetened with sugar or honey.

And since we do have a lot of people who came to live in Europe in our team, there were some specific candies that they seem to miss tremendously:

Dulce de leche
a typical Argentinian candy

Whittakkers peanut slabs
Typical New Zealand thing

Chocolate peanut butter reese's cups
it's an American thing

All Indonesian candy
And to make it complete, I just baked this. I found the recipe in FleurFatale's blog.
Hmm... it smells delicious!